Title: Nelli ja Osku: Leijona yökylässä [Nelli and Osku: The lion who came to stay the night]

Selaa alas suomalainen versio arviointi (Scroll down for Finnish version of assessment)

☹The student’s conclusion: Confirms traditional gender norms

This book reflects the perceived roles concerning gender, gender roles and family prevalent in Finnish society: the men sit on the sofa watching ice hockey and women keep in shape by practicing yoga and other forms of predominantly female exercises. Women are more moody and men are passive for the sake of avoiding conflict. Fathers help mothers to care for the children – but not as full-time carers. Girls play at getting married and the boys play at being Professor Dynamite. Families are traditional nuclear families including mother and father.

In Kontiokari and Penna’s book, Osku is to stay the night at Nelli’s place. Their mothers are going to a yoga class and their fathers have promised to look after the kids while watching ice hockey on TV. Nelli has planned to arrange a wedding in the evening, but Osku wants to play Professor Dynamite. After a little while, Osku decides to go along with Nelli’s proposal and the wedding is arranged. However, before they actually manage to get married, they have a furious row that their fathers finally have to sort out.

You get a very traditional picture of the gender roles for women, men, girls and boys in this picture book: girls want to play at being princesses and the boys at being warriors. The men watch ice hockey on TV and women practice yoga. The men usually play the fool when it comes to bringing up kids and find it easy to forgive them. Women simply nag on their children endlessly. Only occasionally – for instance when the mothers are going out – do the fathers play a slightly bigger role as mother’s helper to look after the children. On the other hand, when you get a little deeper into Kontiokari and Penna’s book, you find that the men have actually been given equal status in the upbringing of their children: They settle the row between Nelli and Osku by starting a new game about a farm which both children like. Their fathers manage – in just the same way as their mothers – to sort out a problem to do with bringing up children. Another aspect of the book that breaks the harmony of the traditional perceived gender role is that boys and girls can be best friends. Any two friends will find that they have different ideas of what they want to play, even if traditional boy and girl games are not involved.

Emotions are in focus in the book and bring gender neutrality to it. A lion watches Nelli and Osku playing from the sidelines and symbolises their emotional status: the lion is happy, sad, frightened or angry – depending on what Nelli and Osku feel. They both demonstrate their negative and positive emotions very clearly. The book does not support the notion that only girls cry and boys create havoc. Everyone has emotions regardless of their gender and the right to display them.

Even though Kontiokari and Penna emphasise that girls and boys have the same emotional register and expressions, what I remember best from the book is that boys and girls play different games. Play should be a child’s work and as we know, children learn a lot from playing. Won’t a child be concerned about getting into a new game after reading this book purely because there is a general notion that some games are only played by either girls or boys?